Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Iron Chef Cat Cora

lives in Santa Barbara? Who knew? A little blurb to highlight the "Viking Classic" and things other than golf to partake in....

Jackson native Cat Cora is the first and only female Iron Chef on the Food Network's Iron Chef America, and she is executive chef of Bon Appetit magazine.

With advice from her famous mentor Julia Child, Cora attended New York's Culinary Institute of America. Her education continued in Europe, and after learning from some of the best chefs in the world, she made her debut in 1999 as co-host of Food Network's Melting Pot with Rocco Di Spirito.

Cora is president and founder of Chefs for Humanity, an organization founded in response to the 2004 Tsunami disaster, and she is the nutritional spokeswoman for UNICEF.

I attended a demonstration cooking event featuring Ms. Cora at the Central Coast Wine Classic a couple of months ago. She said she had bought a house on the Mesa and was moving there with her family. She also said she intends to start a restaurant featuring regional Greek cooking in Santa Barbara, to be named SPIRO.